


Not That Kind Of Pervert

by JupiterMelichios



Category: Marvel (Comics), Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Age Difference, Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Asexual Character, BDSM, Cannibalism, Canon Non-Binary Character, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Human Disaster Eddie Brock, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Mutually Unrequited, Other, Porn Watching, Relationship Negotiation, Sort Of, Teenagers, Xenophilia, disaster bisexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 07:25:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterMelichios/pseuds/JupiterMelichios
Summary: Even before he’d figured out Venom’s age, he’d promised himself he wouldn't do this. You don’t fuck housemates, you don’t date co-workers, you don’t jerk off to the alien parasite that’s slowly devouring your organs from the inside. It’s just basic fucking common sense.





	Not That Kind Of Pervert

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to have a porny coda at some point, but it felt complete as is and writing porn always takes me forever, so here's part one.
> 
> I don't know that the Brood and the Klyntar have any kind of canon relationship, but the movie basically gave the Klyntar the Brood's modus operandi, so I figured in this universe they probably hate each other.
> 
> They tried really hard in the movie to make Venom appeal to teenage boys, and the result was that he kind of ended up feeling like one, so this is my explanation as to why movie venom is so different from comics venom. If relationships with large age differences make you uncomfortable, please do not read this fic.
> 
>  **Warnings** : mentions of rape fantasies, mentions of cannibalism, adult dating an (of age) teenager

“... investigation into Life Foundation continues, but estimates of the number of test subjects who died as a result…”

Eddie turns off the TV. All Carlton Drake’s death has really meant is that some less insane people are in charge. They’ll quietly pay whatever fine they get slapped with, change their trading name, and carry on as though nothing happened. He’s seen it before.

At least they saved the world. That’s what Eddie reminds himself when he starts feeling like they didn’t make a difference. Even if it was mostly Venom, they did it together, and that counts for something.

He’s seen how destructive Venom can be. The thought of hundreds, even thousands, more like him unleashed on earth is too horrible to contemplate, especially when Venom had spoken of it as something normal to him. How many other alien civilizations will humans never get to meet because no one on those worlds was interesting enough to befriend a Symbiote?

Venom stirs in Eddie’s mind, uneasy. “Something is bothering Eddie. Tell us.”

“Can’t you just… read what I’m thinking?”

“Doesn’t work like that.”

Eddie doesn’t bother asking what it does work like. He’s starting to suspect that a lot of Venom’s vague non answers are because the Symbiote doesn’t know much more than he does.

“I was just thinking about what Riot was planning on doing to the world. About how many other planets died like that.”

“Thousands,” Venom says, not sounding especially sorry. The fact that he doesn’t want earth to end hasn’t changed his basic morality in other respects.

“And you? How many planets have you killed?”

There’s a pause, and to Eddie to it feels almost embarrassed. “This was my first one,” Venom says finally.

“Seriously?” That explains how quickly he changed his mind.

“I am… young. For a Symbiote. We live a long time.”

“You’re a kid?!”

“No! I am of age. We would not send a child on a mission like this.”

That’s something at least. “When you say of age…?”

“It is something like being old enough to vote, we think? I became old enough to join the… you would call them military. I was picked from training.”

“You were a cadet.”

Eddie feels the now familiar coolness of Venom’s mind against his own as Venom cross-references terminology against Eddie’s memories to make sure he’s understanding. “Close enough.”

“Why would they send a Cadet on a mission like this? Isn’t this important to the survival of your species?”

“This was not the only mission. Many were sent out. Most do not return. There is no guarantee that the planets we find will be habitable, or the dominant species compatible. The Kree know about us, and have weapons designed to kill us, as do the Khymelians. The Brood feed on planets in much the same way we do, and a small group would not survive long on a Brood planet. Or we might find a dead world, with nothing left to eat.”

“It’s a suicide mission.”

“Not necessarily. But there is a high chance of death.”

“And they send kids?”

“We are not a kid. But they send… cadets. Resources on our home planet are limited. It would be a waste to send experience soldiers to die, when we could send one experienced soldier and three cadets.”

“That’s cold.”

“It works.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to. And you don’t like it because it endangered us, and you care about us.”

“It’s also just a pretty fucked up way to run a society.” Speaking of fucked up. “You kissed me.”

“Anne kissed you.”

“That’s bull and you know it, man. I might not like it, but Dan seems like a really good guy and Anne loves him. She wouldn’t do that. People don’t really make out with their exes every time shit gets bad, that only happens in movies. That was you.”

“Did you like it?”

“Not the point. You’re what, 18?” He’s been rolling with the assumption that Symbiotes are asexual, since Venom has never mentioned Eddie’s occasional arousal, and he’s been doing his best to keep from making Venom uncomfortable. Now he knows he’s got a precocious teenager in his head, he’s really fucking glad that he’s been so circumspect.

He tries to push thoughts at the alien presence in his mind, show Venom what he wants him to see, all the things you can do by the time you’re 18, drive a car and get married and have kids and sign contracts and join the army… and how very very young you still are by human standards.

“That seems… close. Though I am not so immature.”

No teenager thinks they’re immature, and the more mature they think they are, the younger they are on the inside. “Oh good. You’re 18. Shit.”

“Why is this a problem? You are protective towards the very young, that makes sense, but we are not a child. Why does our age matter?”

“Because you kissed me! Because we have words for men who… who take advantage of people younger and less experienced than them, and none of them are good.”

Eddie’s hand moves, waving in front of his face with no conscious input from Eddie. “I don’t see how you could take advantage of me. If anything, I am taking advantage of you.”

That is sentence he is definitely not going to think about. Venom’s english is good, weirdly idiomatic and slang heavy, but it’s still alien to him. He doesn’t understand the implications of what he just said. “Not how it works.”

“If we promise not to kiss you again will you stop freaking out?” If Eddie didn’t know better, he’d think Venom was sulking.

“Were you planning on doing it again?”

“No,” Venom says, but Eddie can feel the moodiness behind the words, the ‘you never let me do anything cool’ disappointment, and how the fuck had he never figured out before now that his other half is a teenager? Once you know it’s obvious in a dozen small ways.

Venom is a teenager, and Eddie isn’t that kind of pervert. And he definitely isn’t disappointed that Venom is never going to kiss him again.

 

* * *

 

He tries not to think about the kiss, but sometimes when Venom’s sleeping (or doing whatever the alien equivalent is) he allows himself a little indulgence.

As a kiss it had been… fine. Good even. Not amazing, even with Venom borrowing from Anne’s memories, even with the sight of Anne as Venom. (At the time he’d just been scared for her, but the further away he gets from the event, the hotter the memory of it becomes.) It had been surprisingly gentle, no pricks from teeth sharp enough to cut through bone, no long long tongue forcing its way into his mouth…

He checks his watch. Based on past experience he’s got maybe another half an hour before Venom is awake again. Plenty of time for a quick wank, but he doesn’t want a quick wank. He hasn’t touched himself once since he first met Venom, and mostly it’s been easy, he’s not a teenager anymore (not like Venom), but there have been moments, an increasing number of moments, when what he really wanted was to edge himself until he was crying with need and then get himself off with two fingers up his ass and not a hand on his cock. (So he maybe has very specific and complex masturbation routines. So sue him. He didn’t have much of a social life in college.)

He hasn’t felt this horny since the early days of his relationship with Anne, and it’s hardly surprising. He didn’t notice it at first, too caught up with the visceral body-horror of being possessed, but Venom is basically the weird monster version of the faceless people who populate all his darkest fantasies. There’s the absolute control of his body, and the lack of privacy, and the danger, and, okay the tongue hadn’t been a kink until that kiss, but fucking Christ the tongue.

Quick, he promises himself. It’s been more than a month, it won’t take long. He’s got time. Quick and dirty and no guilt and then never think about these fantasies again.

He shoves his sweatpants down under his ass, wraps a hand around his cock and doesn’t give himself time to enjoy the sensation, just starts jerking himself off too quick and too rough but that works just fine when he’s thinking about being forced.

God, Venom could force him to do anything, absolutely any degrading thing. All the fucked up things Eddie thinks about but would never do in real life, Venom could find the fantasies in his head and make him play them out. He could touch him anywhere, any time, inky black tendril oozing out of his skin like a HR Giger's fever dreams and touching him. Venom could give himself a cock and shove it up Eddie’s ass any time he wanted, and he wouldn’t even need prep because he could start out small and get bigger and bigger until Eddie couldn’t take it anymore and then just a little bigger after that.

He could hurt him too, pinch his nipples harder than any clamps, cut him, pick him, crush his cock and balls until he’s crying for it.

He could do all of it in public and no one would ever know unless Eddie lost control.

Fuck, he’s about to lose control, he’s so fucking close now and it’s only been seconds, but he’s been building up to this for weeks, like the longest fucking edging session ever, like those guys who wear cock cages and give their girlfriends the key except the alien holding Eddie’s key doesn’t even know that he’s got it.

Even not getting to come is hot when it’s Venom doing it, Venom and his insatiable curiosity for everything human, Venom and his total control over Eddie’s body, Venom and his fucking tongue, the tongue Eddie wants in him so fucking bad, doesn’t even care which orifice just wants to feel it...

At the back of his mind he feels Venom stirring, feels a shock of fear that Venom might see him followed by a jolt of arousal of the same thought and that’s enough to push him over the edge too soon, biting his lip to keep any back noises which might attract Venom’s attention.

Fuck. Fucking fucking fuck. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t give in. He’d fucking promised himself, no wanking to the teenage alien that lives in your brain, even if he is the hottest thing you’ve ever seen. Even before he’d figured out Venom’s age, he’d fucking promised himself. You don’t fuck housemates, you don’t date co-workers, you don’t wank to the alien parasite that’s slowly devouring your organs from the inside. It’s just basic fucking common sense. That shit always backfires on you.

No, he’d also promised no guilt, and that’s more important right now because guilt is an emotion Venom had figured out quickly and he doesn’t like it. If there’s any guilt in Eddie’s mind when Venom wakes up, he’ll spot it right away.

 

So. He’d done something stupid, but it hasn’t actually hurt anyone. It had just been a fantasy. He doesn’t have any more reason to feel guilty for a harmless fantasy than he did for those old well-worn fantasies of Annie choking him and calling him a bitch. He’d never asked her to do that in real life, never even considered it when he knew it was something she’d find upsetting. There;s no reason his fantasy about Venom had to be any different.

In his mind, Venom makes a soft sleepy noise of inquiry. Nothing that eats people should be that adorable.

“I’m okay buddy. Just thinking about some shit. You wanna get some food?”

“Food,” Venom says, still not fully awake. “Potatoes.”

Eddie sighs. The one downside to Venom (aside from the possible catastrophic organ failure in his near future) is the diet. Fried potatoes and chocolate do not a healthy diet make. He never thought he’d actually miss broccoli. Fucking broccoli. It’s tiny gross-tasting trees and he misses the hell out of it.

“We have got to expand our diet.”

“Find me something that isn’t dead.”

“We can’t actually afford to eat oysters for every meal.”

“Oysters…” There’s the cool feeling Venom rifling through his memories for context. “I want to try oysters.”

 

* * *

 

Going to an Oyster bar apparently alone feels weird. Going to a romantic restaurant with his alien symbiote feels weirder.

He’s been very deliberately not thinking about the fact that oysters are an aphrodisiac. It’s not like his libido needs the fucking encouragement.

He’s hardly surprised he’s getting weird looks from the waiters. He’s not dressed nearly fancy enough for this place, and he’s alone, and the dead bluetooth earpiece he’s taken to wearing can only deflect so much suspicion when he’s carrying on half a conversation about the menu.

“What is tabasco?” A tendril stretches out from the back of his hand, reaching for the bottle, and he catches it before it can attract attention. He keeps expecting touching Venom to feel more like touching himself, but it’s still strange and thrilling every time, the slick-dry texture of him, and the strange fluid way he moves against Eddie’s hand.

“Look with your eyes not your fingers... tentacles.” His mom used to say that to him he thinks, slightly hysterically. “It’s hot sauce.”

“Hot like fire?”

“No, hot like... “ There really isn’t any easy way to describe chillies to someone who has no context at all. “Can you see the memories of eating Indian food with Anne?”

Comforting coolness in his thoughts, and then, “I want to try it!”

“Of course you do. Okay, but only a little. I don’t actually like spicy food.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think food should hurt.”

“But you like things that hurt.”

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but he hasn’t actually got the words. “What?”

The Symbiote rifles through his brain, looking for something, and suddenly he’s struck with the sense-memory of getting whipped for the first time, back in college. The domme had been nearly as inexperienced as him, and she’d apologised for not being safer about it when Eddie bumped into her at a mixer a couple of years later, but Eddie hadn’t known enough to be afraid at the time, and he wouldn’t have cared even if he had, out of his head on endorphins and the thrill of finally _finally_ getting something he’d wanted so much. “You do this for fun.”

“Did. It’s, ah, it’s been a long time.” Too long. Maybe if he’d been getting that on the regular, he wouldn’t find it so difficult to stop thinking about Venom.

“But you enjoyed it.”

“Not relevant. That’s… not the same thing as eating chillies. At all.” At least Venom hadn’t found the memories of the one time he’d tried figging - that would have made this whole conversation even more complicated.

“Then why do it?”

Jesus, Eddie thought agreeing to eating live seafood was bad, he definitely hadn’t signed up to explain BDSM to a barely-legal alien. He doesn’t even know if Symbiotes _have_ recreational sex. “It’s… Did you learn anything about earth mammal biology, back in space-cadet school?”

“It is a mating thing. A fucking thing.”

“It’s one hell of fucking thing alright,” Eddie agrees, amused as he so often is by the Symbiote’s bizarrely specific grasp of English.

“But… there are no memories of doing it with Anne.”

“No, not really her scene. Different people like different things.” She hadn’t minded being a little rough with him, but she’d been clear from the start that she was vanilla, and Eddie would have to find a way to live with that. He hadn’t minded. He’d missed it a bit sometimes, sometimes more than a bit, but in the end she’d been worth it. Still Eddie’s not surprised she’s with someone more conventional now. There’d been too many moments when they were both aware of what Eddie wanted and she couldn’t provide, or when Eddie wanted and knew that she would never in a million years guess what he was thinking, because she’d never wanted anything like the things in Eddie’s head.

“You were not compatible. Is that why you don’t want to win her back?”

“No, that’s called being a grown-up. We’ve got names for men who don’t take no for an answer.”

“Are they different from the names for men who take advantage of adolescent aliens?”

Eddie snorts. He’s still not 100% sure how much of a sense of humour Venom has, but he’s funny as hell in a morbid way Eddie appreciates. “A lot of them are the same words. Respecting when someone says no falls into the same category as recognising when someone isn’t giving you a genuine yes.”

“And you don’t think I would give a genuine yes?”

Eddie’s libido would take even an insincere yes, but he’s never been a rapist and he knows not to listen to his libido. It never has anything constructive to say. “You’re young, you said it yourself. You don’t know anything about sex. You don’t know enough to know what you want, and that means you’re not giving informed consent.”

“This is important to you.”

“It’s important to everyone who isn’t a scumbag. But it’s especially important to people like me. People who like the kinds of things I like. When you play in the grey areas it’s real damn important to know where the lines are.”

Venom is quiet for a minute, and then Eddie’s hit hard by the memory of begging for the pain to stop and not meaning a damn word of it. He was never very good at rape-roleplay scenes. He always got too into them and ended up begging for more.

“Those grey areas, yes,” he says, and hopes it doesn’t come out as strangled as it sounds in his head. This is not the conversation he expected to be having when he took his other out for a romantic meal.

Not that this is a romantic meal. Or not that it means anything. Not anything like that. Obviously it means that he cares for his other, and doesn’t want him going hungry. Oh god, not thinking about feeding Venom. Thinking about something else now, anything else.

“Why are we thinking about Baseball?”

“No idea. Sorry. Just… popped into my head for some reason. Shall we order?”

He flags down a waiter and orders a modest amount of oysters. He doesn’t want to spend a fortune only to find out that they aren’t alive enough, or Venom is allergic to seafood.

The waiter gives him very odd looks as he orders, and Eddie’s mortifyingly sure that the guy had overheard at least part of the conversation he’d been having.

“You brought Anne here,” Venom says suddenly.

“Yes,” Eddie says, and then turns it into a cough when the departing waiter turns back to stare. “Yes. For our anniversary one year. She likes seafood.”

“We should bring her here again.”

“I’ve told you before, we’re not going to win her back. Why do you care so much anyway?”

“We like her. She is smart, and brave. She was a good host, but not as good as you. And she makes you feel good things. Love things. Tasty things.”

“Tasty… Are you… eating my emotions?” It sounds insane said out loud, but then so does ‘I have a teenage alien living in my head and he saved the world because he thinks I’m cool’.

“You brain makes different chemicals. Some of them are good. Nourishing. When you think about Anne. When you were remembering being whipped. Sometimes when you think about us too.”

Oh god, that couldn’t be anything good. “What do you mean when I think about you?”

“You think about not being alone, never being alone, and your brain makes the delicious chemicals.”

Shit. Is he in love with Venom? He prods his own memories, feelings, looking for evidence. He hates being apart from him, wants to make him happy, feels better just knowing he’s there, is happy to talk about anything in the world with him, craves his attention, wants to be fucked by him so hard it hurts... Check, check and big fucking check.

He’s in love with his Symbiote. Shit.

“Well you are pretty much my best friend at this point,” he says, with false cheer. “I mean we spend all our time together.”

The Symbiote makes a low noise almost like a purr, and it feels like someone’s running an electric current down Eddie’s spine from the inside, and Eddie never wants it to stop. “You’re my best friend too, Eddie.”

“That’s good,” he says, a little dazed, his brain still focused on that purr and how damn good it had felt. “That’s great, darling.”

There’s an awkward cough next to him and looks up to see the waiter. The poor guy looks nearly as embarrassed as Eddie feels.

"That was quick!” Eddie says, just for something to say, and then kicks himself. “Because you didn’t have to cook anything. Obviously. I knew that. Sorry. Thanks. For the food.”

“If you could just move your napkin, sir?”

“Oh. Oh! Yes. Sorry. Shit. Sorry.”

The waiter sets the plate down with a badly faked smile. “Can I get you anything else?”

A cold shower would be favourite. “No, thank you.”

“Okay, well enjoy your meal.”

“You too. Fuck, I meant…” but the waiter has already (probably wisely) fled. Eddie will just have to leave a big tip. Like this meal wasn’t expensive enough already.

“Food,” Venom says happily. Apparently they’re ignoring the thing where Eddie just called him darling. Which is just fine by Eddie.

“Food,” Eddie agrees, and swallows the first oyster.

He’s pretty sure that whoever said Oysters were an aphrodisiac was talking about how they’ve got good vitamins in them or something. They almost certainly weren’t talking about how the feel of them sliding down his throat, cool and slick, is making him think about how it felt to be kissed by Venom, about all the fantasies he’s been having about Venom fucking his mouth deep enough that Eddie has to swallow around his tongue.

Not thinking about that. Definitely not thinking about that until next time Venom is asleep.

Jesus he’s turning into a sick bastard. Wanting Venom at all was bad enough, wanting hardcore kinky sex with Venom was probably inevitable once he realised he was attracted to him, but getting hard because eating raw sea-food was reminding him of fantasies about his barely-legal alien brain-mate is just a special level of depraved.

“Good?” Eddie asks.

“ _Good_ ,” Venom purrs, obliterating any chances Eddie had of not getting an awkward boner. “More.”

Eddie swallows another to quickly, trying to distract himself from being in love with Venom and failing completely when Venom makes the low pleased noises he makes after eating someone, that Eddie knows he shouldn’t find hot and does anyway.

“Hot one now.”

Eddie adds a few drops of tabasco to an oyster and braces himself.

Venom makes a long pleased oooh sound as it slides down Eddie’s throat. “Spicy.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, wishing he had some yoghurt. “Spicy.”

“Pussy.”

“Can you not use that word? Alien I don't mind, but I'd rather not have a misogynist in my head.”

“Misogynist,” Venom repeats.

“What you can't get that straight out of my brain? Someone who thinks women are less than men. Less strong, less clever, less important.”

“Women?”

“I… What?”

“What is women? Your memories are not clear. Anne is woman. You are man. But what is woman? What is man?”

“Hold on, how do your species reproduce? Are you monogender?”

He tried to push half remembered high school health class lessons at him, along with the purely scientific bits of what he's learned since. He didn't mean to include stuff about trans people or the people who are both or neither or something else entirely, that seems like it should wait for lesson two, but thinking about not thinking about it is the same thing as just sending it in the first place.

Venom is quiet while he processes the information, and finally says, “Klyntar do not have men and women. We are all Klyntar. We do not need another Klyntar to create young. It is just something our bodies do when we are healthy adults.”

Maybe there was something in Eddie’s theory that Symbiotes, Klyntar, are asexual. Now he feels like even more of a creep.

“Well humans don’t work like that. And pussy is only an insult because people think women are weak just for being women. Which isn’t true.”

“Anne is strong,” Venom agrees, sounding a little shame-faced. “The word was in your brain though.”

“Yeah well, I’m a white cis guy in America, I learned some fucked up shit as a kid. Choosing to be a better person doesn’t magically disappear all that stuff from your memories.”

“We’ll thinking about it,” Venom says, and Eddie recognises that’s the best he’s going to get.

“Thanks man. Or not man, I guess. Klyntar.”

“Eddie a man, so Venom is a man.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Why not?”

“No reason I guess. You don’t have to use the same pronouns as me if you don’t want though. You could use, er, they/them. Or xe/hir. Or ne/nem. Or…”

“This is important to you?”

“I don’t want to be forcing my identity onto you. Just because we’re Venom doesn’t mean I’m not still me and you’re not still you, you know?”

Venom makes a thoughtful noise. “Will consider it. More oysters now.”

Eddie laughs. “Sure, we can do that. Tabasco or no tabasco?”

“Hot sauce!”

“Alright, hot sauce it is.” Eddie was prepared to suffer a whole lot of capsaicin in exchange for Venom making happy noises in his head.

They share two more oysters, and then Venom says, “We can feel you thinking questions you know.”

“Sorry. I’ll… think quieter?”

“Ask them.”

“You sure? Okay, I was just wondering whether… You said Klyntar don’t need to have sex to make more Klyntar. Does that mean you don’t….”

“Not with other Klyntar. But we are symbiotic. We know that this is something many hosts enjoy. We feel your pleasure. We enjoy it.”

“Huh. That’s… completely alien. Sorry, I know you’re all alien. That’s just the strangest thing I’ve learned about your species.”

“Weirder than eating people?” Venom teases.

Eddie tries not to think about the eating people thing. It’s 49% completely gross, 49% nightmare fuel, and 2% kinda hot in ways he’s not comfortable thinking about. He may actually be fundamentally broken as a human being. He’s mostly resigned himself to that. “Definitely weirder.” Time for a change of subject. “Do you think the oysters are actually working? You know, feeding you so you don’t need to destroy all my organs to survive?”

“Not as tasty as you,” Venom teases, because apparently he’s decided Eddie is going to have to walk out of this restaurant with an obvious boner. “Not as good as when you are feeling love things. But good.”

“You realise we have to talk to Dan about that, right? If you could be getting your food from serotonin or whatever, maybe we could take anti-depressants, or….”

“Not drugs. Just you, Eddie.” Eddie’s heart feels like it’s going to beat it’s way out of his body any moment, and he doesn’t need the waiter’s disgusted look to know he’s grinning like a kid who just had his first kiss, but he can’t help it. He only realised half an hour ago that he’s in love with this slimy alien weirdo, but now he knows he can’t stop feeling it. “Mmmm, like that.”

Sooner or later Venom will figure out the connection between paying Eddie compliments and Eddie feeling ‘love things’ but at the moment he still seems to be viewing at a pleasant surprise and Eddie’s not going to be the one to tell him.

God, explaining this to Dan is going to be _excruciating_.

 

* * *

 

Dan sounds surprised but pleased when Eddie calls him to book an appointment. Dan had got him to sign some papers so that he’s officially Eddie’s doctor, and also his emergency medical contact. The last thing Eddie needs is to have some well-meaning ER doctor try and give him an MRI if he gets taken in.

“You’re looking better,” Dan tells him when Eddie arrives. It’s the first time he’s actually been in Dan’s office. It’s got that clinical smell hospitals always have, and there are medical posters on the walls, but there’s also a tiny stuffed seal on the bookshelf, and one of those pom-poms with googly eyes stuck to the monitor, and a photo of Anne on the desk, and Eddie feels instantly calmer than he has since he booked the appointment. This room belongs to an actual person who knows him and knows Anne and sort-of-knows Venom, and he’s going to let Eddie walk out again without Eddie having to maim him first.

“I’m, ah, I’m feeling better.”

“Well you’re not jaundiced, which is a good sign that the organ failure has stopped since you got rid of your parasite.”

“He’s not a parasite,” Eddie says, instinctively. “Shit, I was going to lead into that. He’s, ah, he’s not dead. I thought after everything it was safer if no one knew he’d survived, but he’s here. In me.”

To his credit, Dan only looks mildly surprised. “I did wonder. And you want me to check if it’s still killing you?”

“No MRIs. I don’t feel like he’s killing me. I mean, I spent a lot of time googling the symptoms of organ failure and I don’t think I have any of them. No jaundice, no blood in my pee, no unexplained exhaustion… I don’t feel like I’m dying any more.”

“Interesting. What have you been doing differently?”

“Finding foods that he likes.” Venom is still considering the pronoun question, but has confirmed he’s happy for Eddie to keep using he/him in the meantime, even if Eddie feels a bit weird about it. “Been eating a lot of oysters.”

“So it is live food that’s the key? Fascinating.”

“Mostly? He also really likes potatoes though. And chocolate.”

“Huh, well that’s unexpected.”

“There’s something else as well. I think he might be… eating my emotions. Like, my neurochemicals, not metaphorically. He said some of my thoughts were tasty, and I’m pretty sure he was being literal.”

“Well that’s interesting. What emotions, exactly?”

“Ah. Love. Loving thoughts.”

“About… no, scratch that. None of my business. But if you have met someone, you have to bring her over for dinner, Anne would be thrilled to meet her.”

Eddie takes a deep breath. Venom isn’t fully asleep, but he’s… quiet. Keeping himself separate. Respecting Eddie’s request for privacy. He’s been getting better at that. “She, ah, she already has.”

“Oh? Is it… oh. Oh. You mean…?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were bi.”

Eddie snorts. That is such a straight person reaction. “I am, although Klyntar are mono-gender apparently. He uses the same pronouns as me because he mostly doesn’t care and it’s easier than neo-pronouns. Although that may change in the future. I’ve told him to keep me posted.”

“Well. I guess it is convenient, from his perspective. I mean if he eats one of the neurochemicals associated with love, and you’re producing them by being around him…”

“And it’s safe? I mean, there probably hasn’t been any research in this, but do you think it’s safe? That he’s eating the chemicals?”

“I don’t see why not? I mean, physically. What it’s doing to your mental health I have no idea, but from a physical perspective, the only side effect I can see is that you might be experiencing those emotions as muted. You’re obviously still aware that you’re experiencing them, which is good.”

Shit, this is muted? If Venom ever stops absorbing the chemicals he’s probably got about 10 minutes before Eddie proposes to him.

“Does he know?”

Eddie hunches in on himself defensively, aware that it makes him look like a sulky teenager and not caring. Dan hadn't meant the question to hurt but it still had. “How exactly am I supposed to explain that to him? Anyway it doesn't matter. He’s not interested.”

“He saved a planet for you. I think it’s safe to say he feels something for you. And he did kiss you.”

“Oh god, Anne told you about that?”

“She did. She said it was all his idea, and given that he nearly died for you, I believe her.”

“Maybe. That’s between us though.”

“Yeah, sorry, you’re right. That was out of line. Wait, did you say he likes potatoes?”

“Tater tots mostly, but he’ll eat anything potato based as long as it doesn’t have cooked meat in it.”

“I swear I read something about that… Hold on, I’m going to google it. Don’t judge me. I promise I am a real doctor.”

“No judging,” Eddie says, holding up his hands. In the back of his mind, Venom stirs, bored of being ignored, and Eddie tries to send calm affectionate thoughts at him, reassuring him that everything’s okay. “I’m nearly done.”

“Huh? Oh, you weren’t talking to me.”

“He doesn’t like being left out like this.”

“Well I mean obviously it’s up to you, but if he wants to come join us I’ve got no objections.”

He’s lying, Eddie can see his nervousness, but Venom isn’t going to hurt Dan and he really is bored. “You want to come join us, love?”

Venom wakes up fully, and after a moment Eddie feels the now familiar feeling of Venom’s physical substance oozing out of his pores. He forms a head on a long snaking neck and leans companionably against Eddie.

“I don’t think you two have been introduced. Venom this is Dan. Don’t eat him. Dan, this is Venom.”

“Good to finally meet you,” Dan says. The joviality is forced, and Eddie can smell his fear, or Venom can and is feeding it back Eddie, Eddie’s not actually sure. Either way, he’s impressed with how calm Dan is managing to look.

“You are Anne’s mate,” Venom says. The tip of his tongue brushes against Eddie’s neck, and Eddie does his best not to shiver. “You put us in the MRI.”

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know it would hurt you.”

“You were trying to help Eddie.”

“Yes. That’s my job. I’m a doctor. Do you have them on your planet?”

Venom makes a dismissive noise. “Even the Brood know what a healer is.”

“The… Brood?”

“Other aliens. Don’t ask. They don’t get on with Venom’s people.”

“They don’t get on with anyone,” Venom says. “We’re hungry.”

“I’m nearly done here, Dan was just looking something up for me. We’ll go get someone to eat after, okay?”

Dan clears his throat. “Anne also mentioned the… eating people thing. I’m trying to persuade her to get therapy for it, actually, but she keeps pointing out that she couldn’t exactly tell anyone about Venom and… Never mind. The point is, if you’re eating people, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, you need to be careful. It can make humans very sick.”

“Eddie isn’t sick.”

“Not yet. Look, we don’t know much about Kuru, since the last documented case was half a century ago, but it seems to have a long incubation period. There’s a chance you wouldn’t develop symptoms for fifty years. But once you become symptomatic the chances of survival are basically nil.”

Shit shit shit. “And this is just eating human meat?”

“Human brains. I don’t actually know if there are health risks from eating other kinds of human meat, not really something that comes up a lot in my line of work, or if you eat people raw. The most I could find out when I started researching after Anne told me everything was that eating cooked human brain can cause your own brain tissues to degenerate.”

“So we don’t eat any brains,” Venom says, even though Eddie knows it’s the heads he actually wants, presumably to get the supply of Neurochemicals he needs. It’s touching that he’d be prepared to give that up for Eddie. “Pile of bodies, pile of heads.”

Eddie snorts with laughter, and Dan gives him a look like he’s considering calling the psych ward to take him away. “Inside joke,” he says. “But you think that as long as I don’t eat brains, and keep being able to feel my emotions, I’m good to go?”

“Don’t quote me on that. Please God don’t quote me on that. But I think so?”

“I will heal Eddie if he is hurt,” Venom says, sounding like he thinks Dan is impugning on his honour. “I take good care of Eddie.”

Thank god Eddie’s never had a medical fetish. The smell of antiseptic and Dan’s horrified expression are enough to keep him from reacting to Venom’s words. “I think that’s our queue to go. Thanks for the consult Dan.”

“Any time. But I haven’t even checked your vitals. And I was going to take some bloods, check your white blood cell out, and…”

“Next time. This one gets grumpy when he’s hungry.”

Venom licks his cheek, and growls, “I could always go back to eating you,” and he’s joking, Eddie knows he’s joking, and he’s meant dissolving Eddie’s organs anyway not anything dirty, but that doesn’t stop Eddie going weak at the knees.

“Definitely our queue to go. See you around Dan.”

“Try not to die. I’ll text you about the potatoes. Nice to meet you Venom.”

“Lying,” Venom says. “But nice to meet you too. Come on Eddie. Food time.”

“Sure. Food time.”

 

* * *

 

Eddie’s lost time before. In College when he was cramming for exams, and again in the first weeks after Anne left.

It didn’t bother him before. In college all he was missing was eating toast and doing more cramming, and after Anne he’d been too depressed to care about much of anything. This is different.

Since his appointment with Dan he’s been hyper aware of his own mind, looking for any signs that he’s developing symptoms of Kuru. Maybe having Venom means he doesn’t need to worry, but he doesn’t know that, no one knows that, and if he is getting sick there’s no one to notice except him. Venom’s ideas about what makes a functional human are idiosyncratic at best, and he doesn’t speak to anyone else often enough for them to notice.

So when he wakes up sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and absolutely no memory of how he got there, he freaks out a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit.

There’s a ringing in his ears, and he’s distantly aware that he’s shaking, but he can’t focus on it, can’t focus on anything except the fact that he abruptly can’t breath, an iron band around his chest squeezing tighter and tighter and his vision is greying at the edges and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t…

“Eddie! Eddie stop!”

He tries to say that he can’t, that he think he’s having a heart attack, but there’s no air for words, he can’t get them out and that means he can’t call for help, fuck, he’s going to die, he’s going to die!

Abruptly the world goes black. Black and cool and slightly slick but not wet, and it takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realise that he’s inside Venom.

“You are safe,” Venom says, and from the inside Eddie feels his voice more than hears it, but fuck that’s exactly what he needs, the feeling of it rumbling through him distracting him from the panic that’s still trying to take back his mind. “You are safe. You will not be hurt. We will protect Eddie.”

Eddie can’t breathe inside the suit, but he doesn’t actually need to with Venom in his body, not unless he’s going to speak out loud. He’s not dying, and he doesn’t need to breath. He’s okay. He’s calmer, but his heart it still beating painfully hard.

“We are sorry. We did not mean to hurt you.”

“What did you do?” he asks, and there’s no air in his lungs but there doesn’t need to be when he’s using Venom’s mouth to speak.

“We tried to make you sleep.”

“You knocked me out?!”

“We did not think it would hurt you! You have time when it is only you. We wanted…”

“Privacy? Why? I’ve been awake while you ate people, what’s more private than that.”

Venom makes a noise that might be embarrassment, and Eddie finally realises he’d never actually looked at what was open on the laptop.

“Pornhub?! You gave me a fucking panic attack, made me think I was dying of fucking incurable cannibalism sickness, so you could go on pornhub?!”

“What is panic attack?”

“What just happened. What’s still happening. It’s a… fear response. Physical symptoms of anxiety. Losing time, finding yourself somewhere and not knowing how you got there, it can be a symptom of a lot of very serious illnesses.” Talking it out like this, explaining it, is actually helping him to calm down a little as his brain catches up with the fact that this was a false alarm. “When I woke up at the table, I thought I was sick, really sick, because I didn’t remember how I got there.”

“Oh,” Venom says, “We didn’t know.” His voice is small and guilty, and it’s so easy for Eddie to forget sometimes that Venom is younger than him when he’s so strong and opinionated and knows about worlds Eddie has never even heard of, and then he’ll say or do something and suddenly it’s unavoidable. Venom doesn’t know what he’s doing, maybe even less than Eddie does, and Eddie doesn’t have it in him to be mad at his other.

“You didn’t know. But please don’t do that again. If you need time alone, we can work something out, but tell me first. Now, you going to tell me what you were doing on pornhub?”

“Research,” Venom says, sounding a little more like his usual confidence self.

“Research.”

“You were talking about mating, when we ate oysters. I know a little, but what I know is from the animals of Klyntar. There were no sentient mammals. I know that humans are different, but I don’t know why. You memories suggested that this website contained vids of humans mating.”

“You knocked me out so you could watch porn.”

“But I couldn’t find sufficient information in your memories to know what to search. I needed your input.”

“I mean, if you want to know about sex just click on a video.”

“I don’t care about other humans. I wanted to know what interests you.”

“You… you knocked me out so you could watch porn by yourself but then woke me up again so you could make sure you only watched porn I would be into?”

“You are not comfortable talking about mating with me. I expected to be able to find the information I needed in your memory.”

“This isn’t the 90s anymore, no one saves porn. I just search for whatever shit I’m in the mood for.”

“And what are you in the mood for?”

PornHub probably doesn’t have any tentacle porn that Eddie’s aware of, and ‘man chokes on super long alien tongue’ is probably too specific for even the internet. Also Venom is 18, and Eddie had promised himself he wasn’t going to get involved with anyone sharing his mindspace. Not that it matters; with the edges of the panic attack still sharp and jagged in his mind, he’s not sure watching someone get fucked by Venom’s doppleganger would be enough to get him in the mood. “Sleep.”

Venom makes a soft rasping noise Eddie has learnt to interpret as concern, and snakes out a tendril to stroke down Eddie’s arm and curl around his hand. “Did not mean to hurt Eddie.”

“I know.”

“Would never hurt Eddie in bad ways.”

Either Venom has been paying uncomfortably close attention to everything that’s ever made Eddie fall for someone, or he’s just that perfect and the universe is mocking Eddie and his determination to not be a creep. “I know you wouldn’t, darling.”

Venom makes his purring noise, the one that makes Eddie feel like his whole spine is tingling, and maybe Eddie is a little more in the mood than he thought. “This is just for research, right?”

“Want to understand this planet. So much is different from Klyntar. Want to learn.”

“And the reason you want to watch my kind of porn rather than just reading some wikipedia articles?”

“Context. Part of the job of a host it to provide context.”

“Okay. But not pornhub, that shit it nasty.”

“The Google advised it.”

The Klyntar don’t have any exact analogues to the internet, and while Venom learns more every day, he’s still not clear on how it works. “Sometimes the Google lies. Hold on.”

He’s honestly not the biggest porn fan, is usually happy with what his imagination can provide, but sometimes he likes a bit of visual stimulus. But he’s done too many stories on the darker side of modern life to ever be comfortable with mainstream porn sites. No way of knowing how many of the people are really willing, and just the brief glance he’d had at the PornHub front page was enough to make him feel queasy. ‘Teen’ should not be a selling point in porn.

He’d done a story for the campus paper in College on students supporting themselves financially via sex work, and he pulls up one of the queer-owned sites he’d first learned about then, from an interview with a heavily tattooed trans-guy that Eddie had half fallen in love with over the course of a half an hour chat. He knows they pay their stars a decent wage, and treat them well. Plus most of the BDSM scenes they shoot are between established couples, which always makes the sex hotter in his opinion.

Venom watches with interest as he logs in, and reaches his wallet out of his coat pocket for him when the site asks for bank details.

He feels embarrassed, and surprisingly nervous, when he gets through to the main site, and tells himself sternly that he’s being stupid. This is just research for Venom, and his species don’t even have sex, what does it matter what Eddie picks? Obviously he doesn’t want to make Venom uncomfortable, but that’s pretty unlikely unless one of these videos as an MRI in it.

He grins at the idea of that, medical fetish taken to its logical and deeply unsanitary conclusion, and clicks on the first video that looks good, too nervous to take the time to be fussy. The performers in the preview had been hot, there’d been a strap-on and a flogger. Good enough.

Eddie hasn’t watch porn with someone else since a guy he’d dated for like three weeks in College. It had been awkward and uncomfortable, and most of that was the choice of porn (it hadn’t been anything awful, but anything with female subs always makes Eddie uncomfortable. So much of it is just misogyny dressed up as kink that even the good stuff wigs him out) but a lot of it had just been the experience of watching porn with someone else. He’s an exhibitionist with a humiliation kink, hell he’d allowed an old girlfriend to fuck him in front of complete strangers once and gotten off like hell on the whole experience, but watching porn with someone else is a step too far for him. Some things are supposed to be private.

Watching it with Venom is different though. For one thing, he’s really watching it _as_ Venom. There are two different people in his body, but they get closer, more in sync, every day. It’s like all the best bits of living with someone, without the way that other people just rub his depression the wrong way. He’d been intending to spend the rest of his life with Anne, but there’d still been days when just being around her was too much to bear, and that was when he still had health insurance. Venom isn’t like that. Eddie's pretty sure they could spend the rest of their natural life together (how long did Klyntar even live? Venom had said longer than humans but he hadn’t elaborated) and he’d never want to be apart from him for longer than his sleep cycle.

Eddie tried to be dispassionate about the video, see it through Venom’s eyes, an interesting curiosity, a way of learning about this strange and alien world, but it’s not how he’s built. Eddie is bad at dispassionate, always has been. He gets invested. It’s a lot of what made the Brock Report so popular, and a lot of what got him fired and dumped. Plus this is the good shit.

The performers are kissing, the dom holding their sub’s face still, forcing them to take what they’re given, and that’s always done it for Eddie. Being forced to take things he would have happily accepted, being forced into the submissive role he wanted to take anyway. (This is why you’re so bad at rape-roleplay he thinks to himself, and laughs softly.)

Venom makes a questioning noise, and Eddie makes a dismissive gesture. “Inside joke.”

“We are inside.”

That makes Eddie laugh again. “Yeah, I guess you are. I was thinking about rape fantasies.”

There’s a pause while Venom dissects that. “Enjoying… pretending to be forced, but really willing?”

“Yeah, exactly that.”

“Eddie likes that?”

“Sometimes. I’m no good at it though. I always forget I’m supposed to be fighting back.” He can feel Venom’s disapproval so he clarifies quickly, “it’s something you only do with someone you really trust. I mean _really_ trust. And you have safeguards in place, ways to let your partner know that you want out that aren’t saying no or struggling. It’s safe, if you do it properly.”

“Don’t like the idea of anyone forcing Eddie to do anything,” Venom says. “Don’t like the idea of Eddie in danger, even pretend danger.”

“Well it’s not like I was planning on looking for a dom, or a new partner, so you’re in luck.”

“Good,” Venom says, with a forcefulness that surprises Eddie, and makes his face heat with a blush. He’s always been a sucker for possessiveness. “Oh, whipping. Eddie likes whipping.”

Eddie returns his focus to the video. It’s only a flogging, not a real whipping, but it’s still enough to make him shift in his seat as his cock hardens up enough to be pressing uncomfortably against the seam of his jeans.

“Good pain,” Venom says. “Like hot sauce.”

“Not exactly.” Although there’s almost certainly someone somewhere who gets off on being forced to eat spicy food. Humans are weird like that. “Not for me anyway.”

“Pretending to be hurt?”

“No. I like it when it really hurts.” He’s getting whiplash from going from being so scared to so horny this quickly, but then he wouldn’t like the stuff he does if there wasn’t a connection between fear and arousal in his mind.

On the screen the dom has dropped the flogger and has two gloved finger in their subs ass, pumping fast and hard while the sub wails and shakes. “Do you also like that?” Venom asks, and his voice sounds almost sly.

“Yeah,” Eddie admits without shame. Of all the things in his life he’s fucked up about, he’d always been proud that his sexuality isn’t one of them. “I do.”

“But you don’t want to find someone who can it for you.”

“I can do it just fine for myself thanks.”

“We would like to see that.”

Eddie’s whole body flushes hot with arousal, the blood roaring in his ears. “Pretty sure you don’t.”

“We want to know everything about you, Eddie. We want to see everything. We are Venom. We are together.”

“We are Venom. That’s not the same as… as dating.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re an underage assexual alien!”

“Not underage. Old enough to fight. Old enough to die. Old enough to know this about Eddie.”

“What are we doing here, V? Really?”

“Research. Eddie said consent required understanding. So we are understanding.”

“This… this is for me?”

“This is for us.”

“You want me? You want… us?”

Venom laughs his strange alien laugh. “Betrayed my people for Eddie. Killed an officer for Eddie. Burned for Eddie.”

“And you kissed me.”

“Anne’s memories said it was how to show care. Missing.”

“You missed me when we were apart?”

“Klyntar are not supposed to miss old hosts. Not supposed to talk to hosts, or share with hosts, or care for hosts. But Eddie is special. Venom is special.”

“Yeah. We are.”

“So tell us. How much do we have to learn? How old do we have to be? What must we do?” Suddenly it’s as though a barrier in his mind Eddie hadn’t been aware of has dropped and he can feel everything Venom feels, all the hurt and fear and guilt and love. So much love, more love than Eddie ever deserved.

Fuck. Eddie tries to be a good person, he tries to live his life according to a code, but how can he say no to that? How can he feel the depth and intensity of Venom’s care for him and turn away?

“This much,” he says, his voice choked with emotion and unshed tears. “This much, fuck V. I love you. I love you so fucking much that if you weren’t eating my neurochemicals I think I’d go mad with it.”

“We are Venom,” Venom says, and for the first time Eddie understands what Venom has been trying to tell him every time he says that.

“Yeah, love. We are Venom.”

 


End file.
